I Will Go Down With My Ship: Third Edition

Posted February 12, 2016 by Cristina (Girl in the Pages) in Features, I Will Go Down With My Ship / 7 Comments

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Started around Valentine’s Day 2015, I Will Go Down With My Ship is an original feature where I highlight my favorite (and sometimes *often* doomed YA couples). Since Valentine’s day is almost upon us again, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to continue to highlight my favorite fictional couples from books I’ve read in the past year.

Feyre and Tamlin from A Court of Thorns and Roses

There will quite possibly never be another couple that makes me swoon as much as Feyre and Tamlin. The Beauty and the Beast parallels, the gradual courtship, the raw physical chemistry between them…Sarah J Maas knows how to write a seriously addicting romance. I also love how both are strong and warrior type characters themselves, so when they join together they are such a passionate and powerful pairing. They are my ultimate OTP (right after my ship of Me+Tamlin, of course).

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Eadlyn and Kyle from The Heir

I’m usually not a fan of the childhood-friend-turned-love-interest trope, but in the case of The Heir it works. Kyle and Eadlyn didn’t exactly have a good relationship growing up, but they did cultivate an understanding of each other’s lives and the expectations put upon them. I appreciate that Kyle knows her in a way that’s inaccessible to everyone else, and I love that there’s a smidgen of the love-hate thing going on. There’s also something so endearing about Eadlyn falling for someone who’s been there all along, who’s bookish and snarky and isn’t afraid to call her out.

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Bex and Nick from The Royal We

While not technically a “young adult” book, The Royal We has one of the most realistic, messy, and wonderful romances that I’ve read. Hovering in a genre somewhere between New Adult and Adult, it’s a novel loosely based on William and Kate’s heavily publicized courtship. With Bex (short for Rebecca), the quintessential American exchange student at Oxford, catching the eye of the British throne (while of course not ecognizing him at first) this is the perfect wish-fullfillment scenario that we’ve probably all dreamed would happen to us at first. There’s a ton of drama, scandal, and the real and ugly parts of real relationships depicted, and Nick and Bex prove that love can be real amongst the ugly, and sometimes seemingly insurmountable obstacles parts of humanity.

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Lilac and Tarver from These Broken Stars

While I initially thought I wouldn’t get on board with this couple (there was so much bickering in the first part of the novel) I really, really felt for them in the second half. There was just so many feels, brought about by the desperation of their situation and how it brought them together. Bonding over survival is hard to resist. I won’t spoil anything for you, but when that THING happened, I was literally clutching my book and shouting “NO!” out loud, thinking my ship was forever irreparable.

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Blue and Gansey from The Raven Boys

I think this romance hurts everyone because it’s so cute and quirky and awkward and real but YOU KNOW IF THEY GIVE IN TO THEIR FEELINGS IT MEANS DEATH (for Gansey)…(supposedly). After reading BLLB I am just so sucked in by their utter adorableness and how their non-romance romance is almost more intimate than if they could just date. One thing I know is the series just CAN’T end without some serious Gansey and Blue closure. The whole thing is so frustrating!

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Did any of these ships make your OTP list?


I Will Go Down With My Ship: First Edition | I Will Go Down With My Ship: Second Edition

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7 responses to “I Will Go Down With My Ship: Third Edition

  1. While I liked Feyre and Tamlin, there was just something about Tamlin that had me holding back–but I totally agree that their romance was super addicting!

    I also really like Kyle for Eadlyn. He’s my pick for sure for all of the same reasons! How great would it be if they ended up together even though they’ve always been there <3

    • YES I feel SO much more strongly about Kyle and Eadlyn than I ever did about any of the ships in the original Selection series, to be honest! What was it about Tamlin that didn’t quite click for you? Do you think it was a purposeful writing style of the author, since it’s sort of a Beauty and the Beast retelling and the Beast is supposed to be standoff-ish?

      • It’s hard to pinpoint why I didn’t exactly like him. I think part of the problem was that he seemed to be “off-stage” so much and so I didn’t really see why him and Feyre liked each other at the start. I felt like they didn’t have much interaction before their feelings got deeper and that disappointed me. And it’s a shame because I thought they were well suited–I just wanted to seem them interact more in that first bit.

        The fact that he was the “beast” was ok. He was perhaps a little too alpha male for me (with his primal instincts and all) but I understood why.

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